By Carrie DiLauro, Hamilton Robinson Capital Partners
This weekend the Indy 500 will take place at the Brickyard in Indianapolis for its 103rd year. The race has grown to become the largest single-day sporting event in the world, drawing 300,000-400,000 spectators (to put this in perspective, the largest crowd to ever watch a Super Bowl live was Super Bowl XIV in 1980, drawing 103,985 spectators). The Brickyard has been owned by the same family since the end of World War II, so you might be wondering what in the world does this have to do with proprietary deals? Proprietary deal flow is the act of identifying companies that no other investor has engaged with in the hopes of actually closing a deal with better terms and a lower purchase price multiple, achieving a significant competitive advantage. There has been a lot of talk in the private equity sector recently about the decline of proprietary deal flow. Many even believe that proprietary deals no longer exist at all.
